North Beach News: North Beach Citizens gives S.F. homeless a hand

North Beach Citizens made the news recently with all the help they have done getting the homeless off the streets and back into society.

Kristie Fairchild, executive director of North Beach Citizens, works with people who’ve lost their identities, both figuratively and literally.

When Deforrest Wiggins first came to Fairchild seeking help with getting off the streets, he was deep in the throes of addiction and hadn’t spoken with any family members for 23 years.

“He just felt completely anonymous,” Fairchild says.

Eventually, North Beach Citizens helped get Wiggins off the streets, restoring his long-lost sense of identity. With his newfound sense of self, he even mustered enough courage to cold-call his parents for the first time in years. Now, he communicates with them on a daily basis.

North Beach Citizens – celebrating its 10-year anniversary Sunday with a fundraising Italian dinner – has always chosen to tackle homelessness as an individualized problem.

Filmmaker and winery-owner Francis Ford Coppola founded the nonprofit in early 2000. After Coppola brainstormed with other prominent North Beach residents about ways to address homelessness, the organization became a reality, opening its Columbus Avenue headquarters in January 2001.

Calling from his Napa Valley residence, Coppola traces the original impetus behind North Beach Citizens to his strong opinions on panhandling. “Panhandling,” Coppola argues, “is an unacceptable act for both parties.”

Coppola nonetheless felt compassion for beggars he walked past every day on his way to work. He felt an obligation to help them better their station in the community. “The first thought that I had that changed the way I was thinking was, ‘How would you deal with the citizens of North Beach who happen right now to be homeless?’ ”

Mental transformation

In this simple mental transformation – starting to think of homeless people not as pests, but as fellow citizens – the basic ideology behind North Beach Citizens was born.

Wiggins has been housed in North Beach for five years. Sitting in Fairchild’s colorful office, one spindly leg crossed over the other, Wiggins tells the story of his road to homelessness, as well as how North Beach Citizens helped him get off the streets.

Wiggins, a musician who moved to San Francisco in 1985, was dealt a crippling blow when his musical equipment was stolen from his Sixth Street apartment in 2002. “That led to depression, and then depression led to me just being irresponsible, and then I was on the street,” he says wearily.

A cocaine addiction rapidly worsened as he became homeless. “I would buy powdered coke and I would cook it,” Wiggins says. “There were years when I was into snorting it, there were years when I was into shooting it.”

Despite his destitution, Wiggins made a point of not slipping into the isolation and lawlessness he observed other homeless people succumbing to all around him. He hosted open mike nights at Melt Cafe and maintained a good rapport with Chinatown business owners.

Seeing that he was serious about breaking free from his homelessness, North Beach Citizens took Wiggins on as a client. He recalls being housed “almost immediately” five years ago. A psychiatrist the organization had connected Wiggins with determined that he was suffering from severe depression. These days, when Wiggins isn’t giving guitar lessons to locals, he volunteers for the organization that gave him a leg up, appearing at fundraisers and mentoring newer clients.

Commitments

Along with some of North Beach Citizens’ other veteran clients, Wiggins polices the newer clients to make sure they’re keeping up their end of the commitment to reintegrate into mainstream society. “Just because you’re homeless, we’re not going to enable you to get drunk and act like a fool in the neighborhood,” Wiggins says sternly.

In the organization’s early days, many North Beach residents and business owners worried that North Beach Citizens would draw more homeless people to the neighborhood without being able to manage them properly. Though sympathetic to their aims from the get-go, long-time North Beach resident Robert Hinish recalls the organization’s early days as “sort of like the lunatics running the asylum.”

“It was a very well-intended effort on the part of Francis Ford Coppola,” Hinish concedes. “But the folks they hired to supervise it just didn’t provide any structure.” Citing drug use, loitering and fighting as common sights in the vicinity of North Beach Citizens, Hinish says, “It became a very messy situation.”
Fairchild lauded

Hinish says that once Kristie Fairchild took the helm of North Beach Citizens, the more unseemly aspects of having a homelessness nonprofit in the neighborhood vanished and its benefits for the community emerged.

“This organization has turned itself around in ways that few organizations have” Hinish says. “It’s become a very positive influence on the homeless people it serves, and they’ve taken the measures they needed to take to make sure that the homeless problems we have are not a result of North Beach Citizens any longer.”

Over its 10 year history, North Beach Citizens has found permanent homes for 147 people. The city of San Francisco spends $61,000 in public services on each homeless individual using city services per year, Fairchild says. Comparatively, it costs just $18,000 for a formerly homeless person to live in independent housing. Wiggins says what makes North Beach Citizens successful is its recognition of one crucial fact: “Everybody’s got different problems.”

What’s double punch?

double punch is a character shop filled with collectible Japanese toys, limited edition designer toys, and art gallery since 2004. We're located in the North Beach district of San Francisco, California.